CONVOCATION OF REDEDICATION
75th Anniversary of Hendricks Chapel
November 6, 2005

Remarks from the Dean of Hendricks Chapel
Rev. Thomas V. Wolfe

  Let’s begin this moment of reflection by thinking about where we are. We are at the geographic center of campus. Hendricks Chapel was designed to occupy that central location. We are the home of a rich diversity of religious traditions as evidenced here at this convocation. We are the home of an ideal of service that seeks social justice and reciprocal relationships. We are the home of many artistic endeavors: choral singing, organ, bells, concert series. We are a place to bring strong and often discordant feelings to the surface, as we symbolically extend our hands to the community and say, “Put them here.” Even before we know what to do with them, “Put them here, and offer them to the community through this place.”

  Like other entities in this university, Hendricks Chapel is an institution within an institution. We are charged to play our role in contributing to the creation of the culture of Syracuse University, and, if I might be so bold, all of higher education. The first formal activity of our 75th anniversary year was the adoption of a new strategic plan. And during that process of articulating the direction of the Chapel for the next few years, we posed several questions to ourselves in contemplating our next direction. Among the questions were these: Where is our authority in shaping campus culture? What role should Hendricks Chapel play in the larger Syracuse city and the region? What does Hendricks Chapel have to contribute to the national community of chapels on university campuses? And of all those questions we asked in the process, the one I chose today for discussion is: What does Hendricks Chapel have to offer the culture of higher education?

    These questions, along with the others, were intended to expand our gaze, enlarge our context, and push us as others have pushed themselves in this wonderful history we celebrate. We are entrusted with this moment in time. We are stewards of this part of the history and whoever writes the book – bless them, may it at least reflect faithful stewardship of this space in this time. Questions are to guide us in choosing the frame of reference that orients our work. Because the biggest predictor of outcome is the initial choice of the lens in which we see the work. It is very important to do this kind of reflection as we imagine the future of Hendricks Chapel.

    Our lens values individual experience. It takes the individual’s experience seriously, as it intersects with others with different experiences. And at one level it seems so simplistic. But to live that is another matter. Hendricks Chapel is not only a geographic center to this campus, it is an ideological intersection between ideas and reality, between competing realities.

    Intersections are interesting places to live. I pinch myself every day when I drive up the street to the Chapel that I get to work in this place. And, as an aside, let me tell you, whenever I walk away from the building to go to a meeting on another corner of the campus, when I walk back from that meeting I always travel in a direction so that I can gaze upon the building and that façade, to be reminded of the presence of the place, its charge and purpose. In intersections we experience new encounters. We meet the stranger in the intersection. Intersections are places of introduction. Intersections are also places of tension and fear. And sometimes intersections are places of collisions. They are places where people signal their intention and declare their direction. They are places of many negotiations. It’s where people learn to communicate their intentions. Where people learn to choose to yield, learn to take turns, learn to give the right of way. A place where directions are confirmed, and altered, a place that no matter what direction the other has come from, that other can be learned from. An intersection is a place that informs people and enriches their journey after they have passed through. Intersections enable us on our journey.

    These intersections, and the experiences they hold, are what is exciting about contemporary higher education. In an era where public criticism of higher education is high, and trust and confidence in the university is relatively low, we are called to think anew about conceptualizing the university. In his book, University for the Twenty First Century, James Duderstadt, offers us this,

    The structure, location, and legacy of Hendricks Chapel, which is a place focused on relationships and collaborations, is well placed to strive with the institution into that future. Think about what Duderstadt refers to as learning experiences but this time in the Hendricks Chapel context. These are our intersections. First I mention the Chaplains’ Suite. We designed it for our chaplains to share space together. When students come in to find a chaplain they run into students of other faiths, and it makes the possibility of intersection. It is a chance for conversation, debate, and respectful dialogue. We have an Interfaith Living Learning Community in Shaw Hall where students live together for the whole year and they practice their own faith traditions in the presence of the other. And then they talk about it, and they engage each other. The Interfaith Student Council that meets every Wednesday night always picks a topic and looks at it with different lenses. We’ve been to Spain with Muslims, Jews and Christians studying history, and looking at history from each others perspective. There have been academic partnerships with every school and college at this university where we’ve offered what we can, what is unique to our place, in partnership with others. We’ve had community engagements, on and off the campus, and we have opened our doors in moments of discord. Just two weeks ago, our chapel was filled to overflowing during a very troubling time in the University’s history. People shared honestly but respectfully their deeply held feelings. It was a beginning of something new. It is formal and informal, but undergirded by an intentionality designed to create intersections for individuals to discover each other.

    Such encounters of interfaith dialogue and engagement with the community are not luxuries. This is not what students do with their free time. It is part of their vital time. And it’s not just students, its faculty and staff as well as members of our community with us. They are necessities, part and parcel of our educational mission, our spiritual identity and an embodied homeplace.

    The theologian John Cobb calls our attention to it this way. He writes, “We need to be focused in the direction of the research university. And the purpose of research, being from the frontier of the discipline to the needs of the world.” We learn that focus first by encountering others at the intersection where their needs come clear. And the meaning and the purpose of the research is redirected out of the new sensitivity.

    Look at us today. Look at each other right now. We are Hendricks Chapel. Members of this University community, you are Hendricks Chapel. Members of congregations surrounding Hendricks Chapel and other places, you are contributors to Hendricks Chapel. We have enjoyed a time of transition and recognition and that's important. But now it's time. Let's go to work. Blessings to all of you. I solicit your prayers and your thoughts in the days to come. I am grateful for your presence this day, particularly this day.

    In closing, I share this image that cements it for me. A few years ago I spent some time in continuing education; it took me four times over a couple of years to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I was part of a small group of colleagues studying together. We would take one night off during the week, and go out to dinner together and then to some site of local interest. One night we were taken to the Fort Worth Water Gardens. Maybe some of you have seen this. It’s an amazing place. I initially had this picture in my mind that this was going to be a place of great fountains and spraying water with bright and colored lights. We got to the area and I couldn’t even see the place. We parked the car and I said, “Is this it? Where is it?” And they said, “Come.” And I went to the edge and looked over, and there was this little film of water seeping in around the perimeter. There was this big expansive area, but water was just trickling over the edge. And I thought to myself, why did they bring us here? But I was a good guest, and I followed my host. And they led us onto a path of stones that descended down into this water garden. As I began to descend I began to feel the intended experience. These trickles of water around the edges, pouring over the edge, began to accumulate, began to collect, began to merge, began to converge with each other. Until finally, when I stood at the bottom, at the bottommost step, in the midst of it, in every direction all around me there was this raging torrent coming down upon me.

    And I stood there in awe and wonder and with not a little bit of fear, because the power of it was magnificent. It seemed insignificant from the outside. Small streams became a mighty force. And the sound from within was almost overwhelming. Chaotic, loud, and at times uncomfortable, it was a powerful interaction of the central forces negotiating, encountering, dialoguing, informing, sensitizing… becoming.

    The truth of the matter is, and this is the point, you can’t engage it from the outside. You have to step into it, all the way into it. This Chapel will continue to be in the geographic center, but the future of Hendricks Chapel depends upon stepping into a different center – the center of human experience, the center of human story, the center of human learning, in new and different ways. It is not that we choose to do this just for ourselves. It is a way of shaping higher education, and fulfills that part of our mission as well. May this Chapel still stand 100 years from now. And may the story be told of those who continued to venture deeper and deeper into the center.